Mind and Body
by Xakyrie
Summary: I do not wish to spoil this story more than the title and image already do. If that's enough to intrigue you, then read it. I hope you enjoy it. This takes place in the future, and as such, will be AU, and star an OC.
1. Moving In

"Oh stop sulking. I think you might surprise yourself with how much you like it there."

I harrumphed at my father and refocused my glare to the scenery blurring by. The further we went, the more and more rural it seemed. It was almost funny seeing all these hundred year old buildings side by side to actually modern places. I'd bet that some of them didn't even have electricity from the way they looked.

"Look, I know the last year has been rough on both of us lately, but can you at least try to get along with your Grand-Aunt?"

Rough? Understatement of the millennium. First mom and her parents get killed in an accident, then my dad wants to make me decide between splitting up with my friends or splitting up with him. I hadn't expected that he'd shove me into some old lady's house when I chose to stay with my friends.

"Ah, we'll be there soon."

Soon as he said that, I felt the vibrations and noise of the wheels touching the road. Great, we were out far enough where the roads didn't have hover strips. Talk about old.

"And~ we're here!"

I grumbled and got out of the car and went straight for my luggage. A sudden shout startled me, and I spun to locate the source. Heard it again, and again, and finally assumed it was inside the courtyard of the house I was at. What on-

"Get a move on son. Let's go greet your babysitter."

I glared at him as he smugly called it what it was. I was 15 and would probably have been fine living on my own, but dad just insisted I have supervision. Wait, were those shouts from...

"TEI~!" And staring at me was a bamboo sword, right as I rounded the entryway. "You're Late!"

Standing guard at the doorless entrance was a fairly angry looking woman with strong wrinkles on her forehead. My first thought was, I expected her to be older. Then I saw the way she was gripping her bamboo sword and I winced. Oh crap, she's strict.

"Nice to see you too Kirigaya-sensei. And you can blame our lateness on my son here."

"You're not a student of mine, so Suguha's fine. And you boy, had I not been exercising to kill time and frustration, you may have found yourself unconscious by now."

I gulped audibly. She meant it. I quickly bowed and loudly shouted, "My deepest apologies! I won't ever be late again!" I didn't dare lift my head as I heard the faint muffled echo of my declaration, followed by an eerie silence. Then they both laughed heartily and I blushed crimson.

My father wiped a tear from his eye, "I think that's the first time I've seen your authoritative discipline in action."

"If you'd have stopped by my Dojo sometime, I'd be glad to discipline you myself." She said with a smile. I don't know why, but I instantly thought of Grandma.

"Hah, nothing against you, but I wouldn't last the walk there much less the actual activity. Ah that's right, I'd love to stay, chat, and catch up, but I really do have to get going. You're not the only thing I'm late for."

"Understood. Have a safe trip!"

The words brought my father to a halt, and he glanced at Suguha, then smiled a complicated thanks as she just cheerfully sent him off. My father now gone, I realized I hadn't taken a step since I bowed. I decided then and there to be respectful. I didn't want to be clubbed to death. Just her voice sounded like it'd hurt if it hit me. I stood at attention.

"Kitamura Kirito. I'll be under your care."

She looked at me a little surprised. I think she forgot I was there.

"Hmm. That's nice, but you needn't be that polite or serious with me. You're not a student of mine either." She gazed at me softly and seriously, perhaps a little sadly. "We're family, you and I. It's okay to be a little more affectionate and not so distant." She reached out and gently roughed my hair. "Still, not bad brat. Go get your things and bring them upstairs. Your room is at the end of the hall on the left. I'll start on lunch."

I blinked a few times, a little shocked at the personality change. Maybe it won't be so bad here after all. I hauled my luggage into the house, up the stairs, and into my room, or so I figured since the door was open and it looked like it hadn't been used in years. I did a quick scan of my room and saw the ancient computer hardware, and almost laughed. Three monitors? I was almost bewildered at the need for that many, until I remembered they weren't holographic and thus could not be resized or set at ease. On top of that, there was an actual keyboard, with cables! Good lord that's old. Can it even turn on? I looked at the big box where all the cables met up and assumed that the big circle was the power button.

I figured why not, and pushed the button. Sure enough, it actually turned on. But the computer was making odd noises. No way, is it a rotating disc type hard-drive? How does this thing still function? And a fan? Wow. I sat in the chair, surprised at how comfy it was, and enjoyed the fact that the computer hadn't loaded yet. "This is pretty amusing..."

It loaded up, and whoa, its Windows. I couldn't help but laugh then. I did some digging around, finding quite a lot of old games and programming tools. I even found some old internet browsers, different ones at that. But the internet didn't work, no I suppose it wouldn't. The infrastructure is all wireless now, so the wired connection this thing has wouldn't work. Just as I was about to dismiss the possibility of using the internet, I saw a private server connection. It perplexed me, and perplexed me further as I found it password protected. Not one to turn down a challenge, I began trying to crack it open. But that didn't really get far, so instead I started programming my own password cracker. I figured why not, it has all the tools to do so. Despite my unfamiliarity with using an actual keyboard, I finished up the simple program and started it up just as I got called for lunch.

. . .

Going back into the room, I saw that my program had finished. The password was Sachi eh? Not even remotely close to the name or birthday of anyone I knew. The hell is a Sachi? I opened the server and immediately my screen went black. Odd. I saw a blinking type cursor in the upper left and figured it was just the server's console.

Not knowing where to really go from here, I looked up help that every console should have.

**| /h**

Nothing. That's odd. Not even an unrecognized command or some other form of feedback.

**| /h**  
**| /command**

Still nothing. This was unusual so I starting tapping periods. Dot. Dot. Dot. As I tried to think of what to make of this until suddenly.

**| /h**  
**| /command**

**| Who are you?**

What the? What's going on. There shouldn't be internet. Who is this? What did I just hack myself into? Unsure of what to do, I quickly typed in my online name.

**| Kito**

**| Please. Please tell me, who are you?**  
**| What is your name?**

For some reason, I felt a little guilty withholding my name now. Plus, if I pissed off the wrong people, maybe telling them my name might help. Even if it didn't, I doubted hiding my name would save me if they know where I logged in from. When all else fails, be honest.

**| My name is Kitamura Kirito.**

There was a noticable wait. Is it doing a background check on me?

**| ... Please tell me. What is the fate of Kirigaya Kazuto?**

Kazuto? Grandpa? No wait, no problems with my name? And who is this?

**| Kazuto died in a car accident last year with his wife and my mother.**

**| ... I see...**

I wasn't sure what to type next. I wasn't even sure what to make of it all. But I did know what I wanted to know next.

**| Who are you?**

The answer was immediate.

**| Nice to meet you, grandson of Kazuto and Asuna. I am Kazuto's daughter, Yui.**

**. . .**

**. . .**

**. . .**

**This is a story I had in mind for awhile, but haven't had time to write yet. I decided to just get on the ball rolling and write this out.**

**Writing by chapter is a new thing for me. It's not easy for me to release something I haven't finished writing. I do have the beginning and end and everything in between all decided and in mind and on a rough outline. All I have to do is write it out. Barring any major idea changes, this story should be 12 chapters long.**

**Other Fanfics have this trend of using Kiriko as Kazuto and Asuna's Daughter. I am unsure if I want to join this trend, as the mother will be a rather minor character and perhaps leaving it nameless works for the better. If people would feel more at ease if I used Kiriko as the name, let me know. Then again, I AM marrying this character off without permission, and killing her off so~ perhaps its for the best that I leave her unnamed and I hope you guys understand.**

**I hope you guys like how I did the 'console/text' chats. If not, let me know and maybe I'll try a different format approach.**

**Last but not least, please let me know if you like the setting I've set up, as well as how I've set it up/executed it.**

version2 Edit: Changed the TEII! after opening the entrance door to a doorless entryway as shown in the Anime. My bad.

version X edits: thus far, 4 edits of this chapter due to tiny changes not otherwise mentioned.


	2. The Meeting

**| Who are you?**

**| Nice to meet you, grandson of Kazuto and Asuna. I am Kazuto's daughter, Yui.**

I stared at the text displayed before me, unable to quite register what just happened. Daughter? No wait, more than that, why is the name familiar? And I was pretty sure I avoided directly relating myself to my grandparents, though I suppose it wasn't much of a dodge. Still, she obviously knew who I was, and I knew nothing of her. I didn't like that.

**| I didn't know Grandpa had another daughter.**

**| That's because you and I have never met. Or rather, the day of the accident was the day I was to meet you.**

Wait. What?

**| What do you mean?**

**| Your grandfather built me a prototype body. Your mother came over to meet me and we decided that I could finally meet you and be part of your family. I'm a bit of a close kept secret.**

Prototype body? Secret? I had a hunch, which would be amazing if it was true, but, could it really be? I gulped and decided to find out for sure.

**| What are you?**

**| It hurts to ask me like that, but I suppose it can't be helped. Between the two likeliest choices of a digitized consciousness and an intelligent computer program, I am the latter. I am an A.I.**

**| What do you mean digitized consciousness?**

**| Exactly as it sounds. I'm only allowed to tell you that it has been done before.**

Absurd, this is all absurd. Could someone really digitize their consciousness I didn't know something like that could be possible. Wait before that, this is one hell of an impressive A.I.

**| Did Grandpa create you?**

**| Nope! I am entirely responsible for my own self awareness. But I think to better explain the rest of the questions you have, I believe you and I should meet.**

**| Meet? What do you mean? Aren't we meeting now?**

**| Your Grandpa's Amusphere should still be connected. Put it on and say 'Link Start', and the rest will take care of itself.**

An Amusphere? I searched the room, and found it, along with the infamous NerveGear next to it. These could be worth a fortune to collectors. No, more than that, I was scared. The idea of disabling myself to go virtual was terrifying. Despite all the safety precautions taken, people have still managed to find ways to die due to Full Diving, not to mention the obvious danger of brain damage due to extended use. Do I dare? No I want to, I'm just trying to talk myself out of it. I reached out for the Amusphere, and changed course for the NerveGear. This crazy thing's a full on helmet. It's heavy, and solid. Shivers ran through my body as I imagined this thing engulfing my brain and body and swallowing me into the virtual world with no safe way to get out. I put it back, noticing my fingers were shaking. How could people have used this without being scared silly? I grabbed the much lighter Amusphere, scared that I would break it. For some reason, it didn't seem as scary. I put it on and lay on the bed and said the command.

"Link Start."

I saw lots of brilliant displays of light and a very quick automatic login procedure. Before I knew what was happening, I was blinking. I saw a wood floor. I tried to lift my head up, and it felt awkward. A wood cabin? I tried to look around, and the whole thing felt unnatural to me. I really didn't like it here.

"Pa...Pa?"

I spun to the sound of the voice, and found myself dizzy. Dizzy as I was, I could see clearly. A young girl, in a white dress, covering the lower half of her face with her hands. Is she crying? Then before I knew it, she went to fairly emotionless with arms at her side.

"Sorry. I knew the automatic login would have logged you in as your grandfather, but I hadn't expected the pain of the unintended deception."

Unintended deception? So I'm logged in as grandpa? My eyes found my hp bar, or tried to. Every time I moved my eyes, it'd float away again, so I had to learn how to read out the corner of my eye. The first thing I noticed was the very large numbers. The second thing I noticed was the name. Kirito.

"What the? Why is my name there?"

A giggle, a very soft silky giggle startled me. As my eyes focused once again on the girl, she just smiled back gently.

"Kirito was Papa's online name. If you take the first two parts of Kirigaya and add in the last part of Kazuto, you get Kirito. Personally, I think Mama conspired to have you named Kirito."

I looked at her, trying to put it all together. Her Papa and Mama would be Grandpa Kazuto and Grandma Asuna right? Ah look at her, leaning forward slightly with wide eyes, clearly curious what the hell I'm thinking. Is she really an A.I.? Now that I think about it, Grandma really loved calling me little Kirito...

"This explains a few things..." I murmur, and she just smiles away at me, obviously amused. "So, you mentioned that you had a lot to tell me?" I asked, a little annoyed at how happy she was.

"I said that the rest of your questions would be easier to answer here."

"You already know the questions I want to ask don't you?" This was going nowhere.

"I do~ but..." She gripped the front of her gown, looking rather cute. "I really want you to ask them."

"Why? A lecture not in your programming or something?"

She looked a little sad at me. I immediately regretted my joke. Did I offend her because I considered her a program?

"It would be faster if I just explained everything you'd want to know, yes. It's just... I haven't had anyone to talk to in a long time."

Ah damn. That cut right to my heart. The more I talked with her, the more obvious it was that she was an A.I., and the harder it was to believe. There was definitely something artificial in everything she did, and yet, those emotions... are they real? If nothing else, she clearly had the desire to hear my voice. I looked around the room. Wood table, wood chairs, a kitchen, pictures, everything about this house shouted 'Home'. I thought of living alone myself for a year. It didn't seem so bad. But as soon as I thought of her circumstances, it seemed like a very cruel thing to go through.

I looked at her again as she looked very sorry and sad, and for lack of a better description, looking very pleading. I sighed and rubbed my forehead.

"All right all right, let's talk."

"YAY!" She jumped and immediately darted away. "Come! Come! Sit here!" She gestured to a seat at a table. I obliged, went over, and sat down, already exhausted at how much energy this girl had. Well, I suppose I could spoil her a little, I smirked.

*Clack Clack* "Here! Eat up!" I looked at the sandwiches before me. The hell? One looked like a veggie burger with orange sauce in it. It definitely smelled spicy. The other looked like the same thing, but with a purple and dark green sauce, huh? I just stared at these mystery food sandwiches for awhile. They didn't look good to eat. My eyes went back to the cheerfully smiling girl, fully expecting me to try both of them. Uwa, and I thought peer pressure was bad.

I went for the non-spicy one first, figuring it was the safer of the two. Bad tasting I could probably handle, but bad tasting AND spicy? I tried smelling it, but couldn't really make anything from whatever little I could smell. Offhandedly, I wondered what the point of eating in a virtual world was. I took a bite, and opened my eyes in surprise. This was my favorite sandwich! Flavor, Texture, Everything. Only thing off was what it looked like. I fixed my gaze on the pleased girl, happily humming and kicking her feet a little.

"Thought you'd like that one. It's Mama's trademark sandwich. Your mother loved it a lot too."

Ah, this brought back memories. We'd visit mom's parents and Grandma always made these sandwiches. Mom loved them so much she had Grandma try to teach her every time we went. But mom never could get it right, somehow Grandma's was always the best. I finished the sandwich quickly, enjoying every memory and minute of it.

As I licked my fingers, I eyed the other sandwich suspiciously. Now that I think about it, Grandpa always got a different sandwich from the rest of us. I tried it once and it outright nearly killed me. Don't tell me...

"Is that sandwich Grandpa's favorite?"

"Yup! Try it!"

"Pass." I replied immediately.

"Aw~ no guts."

With that, she reached over and grabbed the spicy sandwich of doom, death, and destruction and ate away. I couldn't help but smile as I watched her struggle to eat it, but was amazed nonetheless that she could tolerate it.

"Haaah~ I'll never get how Papa could eat these without a problem or care in the world."

She looked at the half finished sandwich fondly, then continued eating, with far less trouble than when she began. As she finished her sandwich's last few bites, I looked around the room and house once more.

"So, this your home?"

She thumbed some sauce on her cheek and licked it. "Yes it is. Although technically this entire server is my home."

"Is there more to this server than this house?"

"Yup, there's a whole world out there, actually two worlds."

"Two worlds?"

"Yes. It's a bit of a long story."

I leaned back in my chair. "I'm here, I've got time."

"You know of the Sword Art Online incident?"

I immediately thought of the NerveGear in what I must now assume to be Grandpa's room. But they lived somewhere else didn't they? I benched the question for later.

"Grandpa was in the Sword Art Online incident?"

"Papa and Mama both were involved, and were key players in the clearing and ending of the game."

"Grandma was too?" I found that a little hard to believe. They were both so gentle and kind. No, the few times I've seen Grandma get mad... heh.

"There was a second game, Alfheim Online, that your grandparents were both involved in too. As both those worlds held significance for them as well as their close friends, Papa hosted a copy of Alfheim Online, and embedded Sword Art Online's floating castle of Aincrad into it. This home you see, is an exact copy of the original home where I lived with your grandparents for a time, and is also the home they bought when they first got married."

My eyes immediately darted to the pictures of a family hanging on the walls. A young boy, a young beautiful girl, and unmistakably, Yui. No way, Grandma and Grandpa were kids when they got married? In a game at that? I looked closer at the pictures and couldn't help but think to myself, 'Way to go Grandpa!'

"For a long time, Papa and Mama and friends would come to this server and adventure together. But one by one, people stopped coming. By the time your mother was off to college, there was no one left outside of the 3 of us. So your grandfather password protected the world, and spent the remainder of his life dedicated to me. He longed to bring me out to the real world, and managed to build me a body. We told all his friends, and they all couldn't wait to meet me. The reason I'm still here, is that I am a backup. And perhaps no one thought I still existed, because I was probably with your mother and grandparents in the accident."

I interrupted her monologue because I'd made a decision.

"By any chance, do you have Grandpa's information of how to build your body?"

She looked at me, perhaps not expecting that question, or perhaps she was but didn't dare to hope.

"As a matter of fact, I do. It's part of the reason why Papa made a backup of me. I will grant the computer access to the files." She closed her eyes and tilted her head forward a bit. "Done."

"Might I ask..." she started, she seemed a little scared of the answer, "what are you planning to do?"

I stood up, hand on my hip and pointed at her. "I'm going to build you a new body!"

. . .

. . .

. . .

**From The Author:**

**Hope you guys like where I've gone and where I'm going with this so far.**

**I also hope you guys like my style of cliff hangers. XD**

**I've had both these chapters basically in my head in their entirety for months now, so typing them out didn't take very long. There are a couple chapters that are far less 'clear' to me in their entirety, so I will be taking some time to think things through. Also, with finals approaching and various club activities going into their final push, I expect to be delayed for awhile. I hope you don't mind too much. I promise to write when I can.**

**Don't forget to leave a review of your thoughts! They motivate us writers more than you know!**

**Personal note: If you've read my first and only other story at the time of this note, you'll understand what I mean when I say I think I discovered that I focus a little much on the food, oh well.**


	3. First Day

"I'm going to build you a new body!"

Or so I said. Unable to pay attention to the boring lecture about the 100 year war between England and France, I spent my time between gazing out the window, and reading the research notes Yui compiled for me. Unrolled on my desk was my TubeScreen, and while I could certainly play games or surf the net on it, it really wasn't permitted in school. Of course, enforcement varied teacher to teacher, and this one didn't give a damn. If a student didn't pay attention, they could study. If they fail their tests, they fail their tests. While most of the other students were surfing the net, chatting, or playing games, I was most likely the only one diligently studying. No, I take that back, there were one or two classmates actually typing or writing occasional notes on the lecture and such, while I studied my independent material with tired eyes and headaches.

Tap-scrolling through the 629 pages of notes, I sighed silently to myself. Biological Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Robotics, and everything else you can think of that might be involved in the creation of a synthetic body. I'd done a brief glance at the plans of the body itself, but everything was so complex that I was going to have to do each little thing one at a time if I wanted it done right. As a matter of fact, there was so much to do that I didn't even know where to start. There were so many sensors and connections in the skin that I wasn't even sure I'd ever be able to finish it. There were also nearly 5000 actuators to represent the hundreds of muscles of the human body, and many of the muscles had proper 'structure'. Any muscle group that would be easily visible to the outside had shape and contracted realistically. Of course, many supporting internal muscles were simplified, but what really had me impressed was the cooling system. The entire circulatory system was re-envisioned as a cooling system using the lungs to exhale heat like a dog. Yeah that's right, I also have to study mammal thermoregulation. I'm also incredibly intimidated at the complexity of the hair auxiliary heatsink.

The body was just crazy complex, it left nothing out. On the other hand, the body was also perfectly designed, with every conceivable safeguard and realistic representation of the human body. Well, almost. There's an annotation that a revision is in order to incorporate nanotechnology to assist in repairing ruptured coolant lines, but nanotechnology is still fairly rough by comparison, and working out how to prevent nanites from over-repairing and thus sealing the coolant lines or anything else for that matter is a programming problem that has still not been resolved. In the meantime though, there's a chemical mixture to be used as the all important coolant which will solidify as it reacts to air and 'clot' cuts. It also supposedly has the exact viscosity and colors of blood, using heat as the variable instead of oxygen content. Creating the mixture should prove trickier than it looks. The plans also allow her to eat and drink but she won't actually digest or absorb anything from it. It'll simply be stored until it's safe to release, anatomically correctly of course. I confess that I'm not sure I'd be capable of looking at her once I was done knowing every inch of her body like that, especially the fact that she has an 'ona-hole' built in. Thankfully that part's surprisingly simple and more closely resembles a sensored textured condom than what real people have. I did find myself questioning the point of building a 10 year old body with that, but I suppose it's necessary to maintain the illusion of anatomical accuracy while still being able to sense if something's stuck inside.

There are also some rough plans tossed in to incorporate food and drink for energy and synthesis of fluids in her body such as coolant and lubricants, but they're obviously far from being finished. While extraction of the correct materials could be accomplished, synthesis and delivery to the correct places was a different matter that added an entire new level of complexity upon everything already designed, and has basically been left under future nanite research while the current plans will suffice to be almost perfect except for the self-sustaining maintenance. Meaning she'd still need to plug in occasionally, and any wear and tear she receives must be fixed manually. I also found it amusing that the locations of the energy cells in the chest, abdomen, and head are intentionally placed to simulate the weight distribution of the human body.

When all's said and done, according to this, she should be able to move and balance exactly like a human, have all 5 senses with the taste and smell programming from TheSeedX, eat and drink, bleed and clot, all exactly like a normal human girl, with two obvious differences. The first is the body will be 38% too heavy for what should humanly be there, but the limits have already been reached on miniaturization and materials and hopefully it'll just be passed off as 'you're heavier than you look' instead of 'you're too heavy to be human'. The second is that she will be far stronger than a normal human, which is to be expected, but nothing learning how to hold back won't fix and there may come a time when super human strength may be necessary. She should even be able to swim, though she may swim like a lead weight in water since... she's a lead weight in water.

The hourly bell rings and I quickly take a picture of the ScreenBoard with my TubeScreen before the teacher clears it. What I liked best about my TubeScreen was that after rolling it up, I could fit it perfectly along the back belt loops of my jeans. It made me feel like a ninja sheathing and unsheathing it like that. With my final class of the day finished, I pondered over stopping by the Game Programmers' Club. It was fun and they were good friends who helped me deal with the accident, but I wouldn't hang out with them anywhere else doing anything else. It wasn't that I grumbled to stay in this school because of them or the club or anything really. I just hated the bothersome unknown. Still, had I not stayed, I wouldn't have met Yui, or Sugu, as she prefers to be called, since anything else I call her seems either rude or inapproriate. With that making up my mind, I decided that I might just quit the club, at least for now, since I now have other things to do.

It was my first time coming back from school after the move, so I still got a little lost, but thankfully I could home in on the occasional warcries. It wasn't until I was just about to round the corner of the entrance that I recalled what happened the first time I heard these shouts.

"HAAAH!" "UgwaaA!" and with that, I unceremoniously flopped on my butt.

"You! Do you have ANY idea how annoying it is to have packages delivered to MY Dojo while I'm instructing?"

Yeah that's right, she blows off steam to kill time when she's mad. I should have realized sooner and braced myself.

"I'm pretty sure the address was for here not your Dojo. Actually, I don't even know where your Dojo is!"

"Be that as it may, they still delivered to me because no one's home. And then I have to pick it up and bring it here! I WALK! How do you intend on compensating me for this hassle?"

"Well er... I dunno. But um... I think you should know... there's probably gonna be a lot more. A LOT more..."

I watched her expression carefully. For a brief moment, it was frozen solid in anger. Then her eyebrow twitched. Then her nose began snarling. And when she began raising her shinai over head as if to strike me, I cringed on the ground like a snail. I guess the sight alone must have been laughably pitiful because I heard a grandiose sigh. Peeking back up at her, she thrusts her shinai quickly at my nose to point at me.

"Two things are going to happen. First, you will come straight to the Dojo instead of home after school. It seems you don't have club activities anyways. You will pick up and bring home any and all packages you've ordered yourself. Even if there are no packages, you will come anyways, because the second thing that's going to happen is you're going to learn kendo from me. At my Dojo. Afterschool. Everyday. No grandson of my brother's is going to be a wimp!"

With that declaration, she turned around and began walking. It wasn't until I picked myself up from the ground that I realized she wasn't heading into the house, but rather to the tiny Dojo off to the side, and suddenly I had a really bad feeling.

"Did you not hear me bozu? Afterschool. Everyday. Starting Now. For today and holidays, we'll be using the Dojo here. We're going to put some Man in you." I groaned and hobbled after her. There was no escaping the beating I was about to receive, so I may as well wear armor.

45 minutes of agony later, I managed to carry the several small packages up the stairs to my new room, and collapsed on the bed. Everywhere hurt. Whatever wasn't bruised from being struck felt like it was bruised from over exertion. I strained my neck to look at the Amusphere next to me. Without even thinking, I immediately struggled to put it on, and said the command "Link Start".

A blur of lights and auto-logins later, I immediately felt the relief of not being in excruciating pain. I was still adjusting to the disorientation of not being the owner of my own body, yet I am, when I suddenly noticed that I wasn't alone. Seated in a green chair around the dining table in front of 2 empty plates, was a boy in black, with a light blue dragon on his lap. I was a little confounded as I was expecting to only find the adorable girl in white Yui, but she was nowhere to be seen. Then I heard a magical effect noise coming from the kitchen. I turned to get a better look, and there before my eyes was an auburn haired girl in an apron, happily working the kitchen whilst humming a tune. My brain boggled until my eyes found the pictures of the family on the wall. Grandpa and Grandma in their kid forms he assumed. But still, where was Yui?

I did another look-over around the room, but couldn't see her anywhere. Then I saw her. Pink and tiny, cutely curled on top of the black kid's head. I heard the magical noises from the kitchen again, and upon observation, realized it was on loop. All of these must have been Yui's creations, though perhaps the tiny pink fairy was actually her. A recreation of her family life to pass the time in peace and happiness. The girl in the kitchen put away a couple more sandwiches and started cooking some more, humming the same tune. It was possibly the loneliest thing I'd ever seen. Still here I was, but I didn't want to disturb the 3 sleeping, so I wandered into the kitchen to see if I could interact with this recreation of Grandma Asuna. Sure enough, waving in front of her smiling eyes did nothing. She truly was a simple recreation. Almost like a replay. Then the thought occurred to me, could it actually be a replay? Did this actually happen? Not just a recreation out of memory?

Glancing back at the tiny fairy curled on her nest, I wondered if she chose this playback to nap or sleep to because it was the most soothing. Gazing once more at the drooling boy of my Grandpa with the cute blue dragon on his lap, I couldn't help but smile. Yeah, this was certainly a very peaceful and soothing scene. If you could bottle what a happy family was, this would be it.

With that last thought in mind as I gaze at the scene before me, I logged out. Opening up my eyes and staring through the transparent Amusphere screen, the sudden onset of pain from my body paralyzed me. Adjusting to the pain, I thought about how Yui is basically an orphan. She'd lost her father and mother, and worse yet, over time, her family of friends dwindled and abandoned her. A harsh word choice, but conceivably the truth. I wanted her to have family. I wanted her to have friends. I wanted her to exist in the real world, and not be trapped in that virtual cage. Groaning myself out of bed, with time to spare for dinner, I unpacked the first of the deliveries. It was time to begin assembly.

**. . .**

**. . .**

**. . .**

**I'm BACK and Alive! ****I've had a HELL of a summer and first few weeks of school. Seriously, you'd think I'd have more free time. (Admittedly, I also blame PlanetSide2 and TW:Rome 2, but I really havn't had much time for even gaming lately.)**

Man I've written Chapter_3 FIVE different ways! This is the fifth and ultimately (hopefully) final iteration that will continue the chain of events I currently envision.  
Namely the issue being where the money came from. I've decided on a simple solution as opposed to introducing new unnecessary characters or extra plot in the form of contract work. Frankly, every time I wrote story additions to cover the financial side, side projects, or friends in school, or whatever else that my previous 4 drafts did, it just got too off topic and really offered little to the type of story I wish to tell. Namely, I want this story to be about Yui, not a 'Programmer's Journey', even though I really like the idea of 'like grandfather like grandson'.

**Without spoiling anything, the actual simple answer I decided on will be covered in the next chapter since this one had other priorities and already too much to say at once in my opinion. The chapter got long enough from just explaining the body I envisioned, which frankly, is totally not important to the story (thus far planned anyways), but hey, people will be curious, I had a lot of ideas, and the time to explain it truly was Now or Never. **

**I also have cliff hangers and pacing I wish to accomplish during my planned story progression, so I'm extremely hesitant to merge chapters that I've planned, and putting too much info in one would leave another fairly hollow.**

**Also, for the first readers until this chapter got posted, if you didn't notice, I totally made a goof.  
**_In my first chapter, there was an entrance doorway that's stereo typical of many Japanese anime houses. But upon review of the SAO Anime, the entrance is simply wide open. I've edited the mistake in the first chapter already, as it's unlikely they will have 'added' an entrance for privacy judging by the feel of their front yard._

**I hope this chapter doesn't come off as too much of a wall of text due to lack of dialogue. I had a seriously hard time finding the paragraph breaks in the wall of text so I hope it feels natural.**

**Chapter 4 is nearly complete in my mind, but there's a couple things I need to decide for the chain of events afterwards related to chapter 4 before I can finish writing it, just as things I'd write in chapter 3 would have consequences of various forms in later chapters as well. **


End file.
